In the last decade or so, Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) has come to be employed with switching systems. A CTI terminal is a combination of a Personal Computer (PC) with an attached telephone. The PC is controlled by an application program. This application program emulates a voice terminal used in call centers such as a Callmaster or Callmaster II voice terminals. In addition to emulating a normal call center voice terminal, the PC application allows additional functions to be performed. The PC is interconnected to the switching system utilizing normal telephone communication links. The switching system is programmed to consider the CTI terminal as an ordinary call center voice terminal. In addition, the CTI terminal is interconnected to a file server or client server which provides the CTI terminal database information. CTI terminals have been especially used in call centers. Call centers are systems that enable a group of agents to serve incoming and/or outgoing calls, with the calls being distributed and connected to whichever of the agents happen to be available at the time of the call. The call/distribution function is commonly referred to as Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) is generally implemented in software that executes either in a stored program controlled switching system, such as a Private Branch Exchange (PBX) or in an adjunct processor of the switching system.
In most ACD centers, the number of telecommunication agents is greater than the number of CTI terminals. This occurs since an ACD center is normally active at least 16 hours a day if not 24 hours so there are two or three shifts of telecommunication agents. In addition, some ACD centers schedule breaks of the telecommunication agents such that within a shift there may be more telecommunication agents than available CTI terminals. The result is that often a telecommunication agent will use many different CTI terminals over the course of time. This means that telecommunication agents cannot customize the CTI terminals for their personal needs unless they do it for each CTI terminal.